


Five Desserts and a Potion

by kitsunerei88



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black Series - murkybluematter
Genre: F/M, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Five Times, Rigel Black Exchange, Rigelverse, The Pureblood Pretense, The Rigel Black Chronicles, The Rigel Black Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23778400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88
Summary: Or: five times Harry and Archie weren't lovers, and one time they were.
Relationships: Harriett Potter/Arcturus Rigel Black
Comments: 7
Kudos: 123
Collections: Rigel Black Chronicles Appreciation, Rigel Black Exchange Round 1





	Five Desserts and a Potion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dainpdf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dainpdf/gifts).



  1. _Brownies_



“Do I have to?” Archie whines, clinging to his clothes protectively. Harry _always_ does this, always makes him exchange his clothes with hers. And it isn’t that he hates her clothes, not really, but today Aunt Lily has Harry in a white dress patterned with bright flowers and Archie just _knows_ that he’ll look ridiculous in it. The red gingham dress or the plain yellow one, those are fine, even the blue lace one is fine, but _flowers._

There are limits. He doesn’t want to wear flowers.

“I’m older than you,” Harry says, frowning in determination. She doesn’t want to wear flowers either. _No one_ wants to wear flowers. “By _three days and six hours_. And Mum will be all angry at me when I cover this dress in toad bile. Please, Archie? Please, pretty please, with a cherry on top?”

“But I don’t _want_ to,” Archie protests, even if he kind of sees the point. Aunt Lily really won’t like it if Harry spills her potions ingredients over the dress. “Can’t you just… I don’t know. Read a book with me this afternoon.”

“But Uncle Remus _just_ brought me new ingredients!” Harry pouts, before changing tack. “Okay, okay. If you change clothes with me, I’ll make sure there’s chocolate ice cream at dinner tonight.”

Archie squints at her, suspicious. “How?”

“I’ll beg Dad. You know he can’t say no to me when I start crying.”

Archie squints a little harder. “I want fudge sauce, too. I want chocolate ice cream _with fudge sauce_.”

“I’ll get it, Archie, I promise. Chocolate with fudge sauce.”

“And a brownie.”

“ _And_ a brownie.”

Archie sniffs, unhappy but conceding, before he strips off his shirt for her. “Fine. Chocolate ice cream with fudge sauce and a brownie.”

Harry has never gotten out of a dress so quickly.

  1. _Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans_



They’re all of eleven years old when they come up with the plan, over a truly monstrous bag of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans. Archie will, it is decided over a salt-and-pepper flavoured bean, take Harry’s place at the American Institute of Magic, signing up for the Healing program of his dreams, while Harry takes his place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

There are two of them: one a half-blood, one a pureblood. They each have a dream, and it’s so easy, that year, to just trade places. At eleven years old, it’s simple, and more than that it looks _right_.

Archie wants to Heal, and the American Institute of Magic has the best Healing program in the world. Harry wants to brew potions, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has Master Severus Snape, the best Potions Master in the world.

“Here we are,” she says, the night before the ruse begins. Until now, they’ve talked about it, they’ve planned—but it is here, at the fork in the road, that the ruse truly begins.

“Good luck,” Archie replies, reaching forward to pull her into a rough hug. “If we’re caught, we’ll both be skinned; you by the Ministry, and me by your parents.”

“No one’s going to catch us, Archie.” Harry tilts her chin up, stubborn, putting on a bravado that she doesn’t really feel. Archie scans her face, worried, but she grips his forearms. “I promise, it’ll be fine. No one is going to catch us.”

Everything looks so easy then.

  1. _Cake_



The Marriage Law on the table is a problem, and they both know it. More than that, their parents know it, and the documents for their betrothal are signed, sealed, and filed with their full consent.

It isn’t like they’ll actually marry, after all. This is just an interim measure, and they’re all of twelve years old. This is just a stupid thing that they need to do to make sure that Harry has all the opportunities that she should have and to protect her until they can either throw the law out or, if the law passes, Harry can find a pureblood to marry for real.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Harry asks, her green eyes bright and apologetic all at once. “It’s a lot to ask of you, Archie.”

Archie smiles impishly, reaching for the cake that’s sitting in front of her. “What’s a little fake betrothal between friends?” he asks. “You weren’t going to eat this, were you?”

Trust Archie to take the situation for his best advantage. Harry rolls her eyes but lets him take her slice of cake though she was, indeed, going to eat it.

  1. _Ice Cream_



They are best friends, almost siblings, and over four years of ruse, a year of exile and two years of general social upheaval, they are nothing more. But what more is needed?

Archie dates Hermione Granger for two years, five months, and twenty-two days. The world is a different place, now, and his engagement to Harry has long since been terminated. Once they’re back in Britain, he’s going to propose to her. He has the ring already, worked white gold with a clear, shining, diamond, which, whatever Harry says, Archie is convinced is too small.

But Hermione, it turns out, has other plans.

“I’m so sorry, Archie,” she says, two nights after their graduation from the American Institute of Magic, and her bright brown eyes really are sorry. “I thought I told you. I’m staying in America. Beacon Hill Hospital for Magical Maladies in Boston offered me an internship in their neonatal intensive care unit, and I accepted.”

She did tell him she was applying broadly for internships, he remembers, and since it is Hermione, he knew that she would be accepted anywhere that she applied. But he had thought—or, maybe he had hoped—that she would be taking the one at St. Mungo’s in London. Archie is going to St. Mungo’s, and Hermione has always said that she was close to her parents. Close enough, Archie has always assumed, that she would go home to Britain with him.

But she never said she would, and the Beacon Hill Hospital is the most prestigious magical hospital in the world.

“I just—” he stutters. “I thought you would be coming home. To Britain.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” Hermione repeats, reaching out to touch his arm. “I just—you know how Britain is, and this is such a good opportunity for me. I wouldn’t get this kind of opportunity at St. Mungo’s.”

“But—that world is over, Hermione,” Archie argues. “It’s not—blood status doesn’t matter anymore.”

There’s a moment of silence, before Hermione sighs. “Just because there’s no legal discrimination against people like me doesn’t mean that there won’t still be discrimination. It’ll just be more insidious, harder to fight. And you know that Beacon Hill is just—it’s a great opportunity for me.”

“I know—” Archie cuts himself off, knowing she is right. “But what about your parents? What about—what about _us?_ ”

“Oh, Archie.” Hermione sits beside him, pulls him into her arms for a tight hug. One of her last, though Archie doesn’t know it yet. “My parents want what is best for me, and if that means staying in America, that’s what it means. And as for us—well, I love you, Archie, but I’m not going to ask you to stay for me. I know how much you love your family.”

“But—” Archie is crying, now. “Can we—maybe we can do a long-distance thing? For a few years?”

There’s a moment of silence, and Hermione is rubbing his back, making comforting hushing sounds which don’t for an instant hide the fact that she’s breaking up with him. She’s breaking up with him, here and now, and he wanted to _marry_ her.

“I don’t know where I’ll be after the internship,” Hermione murmurs. “I’m sorry, Archie, I really am. I’m so, so sorry.”

Silently, Archie nods into her shoulder. He understands—he really does, as much as it hurts. It’s too much to ask Hermione to give up her dreams, and it’s too much to ask him to give up his family. So, they don’t ask.

They don’t ask, and their relationship ends, after two years, five months, and twenty-two days.

Harry is waiting at the aeroport when he gets off the plane, standing beside Dad, beside Uncle James and Aunt Lily and Uncle Remus. But it’s her arms that he collapses into, bursting into the miserable tears that he has held back for most of the flight home.

“Ice cream,” Harry announces, and Archie knows without having to look that she can see, before Dad, before Uncle James and Aunt Lily and Uncle Remus, that Hermione Granger is _not_ trailing behind him. “We’ll go get some ice cream, Arch. That’s what the Muggle books call for, right?”

  1. _Truffles_



“I just don’t think it’s working,” Harry says, fighting her instinct to look away from her hopefully-soon-to-be-former boyfriend. She and Archie have drilled this conversation about eighteen times, through two interminable months when Harry knew it wasn’t working but didn’t know how to go about saying so. It’s wrong to pull Draco along, and she knows it, and this is a conversation that needs to happen, as hard as it is. “I’m sorry, Draco. I tried but—but it’s just not working.”

“But why?” Draco demands, his grey eyes flashing in hurt and anger. “Why isn’t it working? Aren’t you happy?”

It’s not a matter of happiness or not. Sometimes, when she is with Draco, she is happy. When she is with Draco, she remembers the happiest memories she has of Hogwarts. But she also remembers so much more—she remembers Lord Riddle, and she remembers danger, and she remembers fear and guilt. When Draco looks at her, she remembers the best and the worst parts of being _Rigel Black_ , and that is an identity that, while always a _part_ of her, she wants to leave behind. It’s not her, not anymore, and Harry Potter is _more_ than Rigel Black.

“I’m not happy, Draco,” she says finally, because it’s the easiest thing to say even if the truth is more complicated. “It’s me, not you, because you’ve—you do everything right.”

“Don’t give me that,” Draco snaps, standing up. He’s too loud, and half the patrons of the Leaky Cauldron are looking at them now. Harry has never liked attention—even as herself now, without the crushing weight of pretending to be a pureblood, she doesn’t like to draw attention. “Don’t give me that, _it’s not you, it’s me_ talk. I’m clearly _not_ doing everything right, if you’re breaking up with me.”

Don’t give him a reason, Archie has warned her. Someone like Draco, he’ll latch onto a reason and argue with you, he’ll try to change your mind. This is your life, and you don’t need to justify your decisions. If you don’t want to date him, you shouldn’t date him. Full stop.

“But it really is me, and not you,” Harry says, looking Draco squarely in the eyes with a fresh surge of confidence. “I don’t have all the answers, Draco. I don’t really know why it isn’t working, but it isn’t. It’s not fair to either of us to pretend otherwise. I’m sorry it’s not working. I’m sorry. But it’s over.”

A moment of silence, and Draco grabs his cloak. “Fine,” he says, not looking at her, but Harry can see the sparkle of tears in his eyes anyway. “Fine, then. I’ll—I’ll see you around, Harry.”

He leaves, and Harry lets out a breath she didn’t even realize she was holding. A few minutes later, a new figure slides into the booth across from her, and hands her a box.

She frowns and opens it, a little unenthusiastic, and stares at twenty-four tiny, sugar-covered lumps.

“Chocolate?” she asks, picking one up and popping it in her mouth. The chocolate, almost a little too sweet, melts in her mouth and makes her feel like slightly less of a heel than she did five minutes ago. “Not ice cream?”

“You don’t even like ice cream,” Archie says flippantly, leaning on the sticky table between them. “Nah, it’s chocolate truffles for you.”

  1. _A Potion_



Maybe it’s surprising, and maybe it isn’t.

They’re siblings, they’re best friends. They’re co-conspirators, they’re each other’s first and foremost support. When one of them walks into a room, it’s the other that they look for. They know most of everything about each other, and when they fall into each other, it’s easy.

It’s the night that Archie finishes his residency at St. Mungo’s Hospital. He’s now a bona fide Healer specialising in Infectious Disease, and he already has a job lined up at the same hospital. They celebrate at Potter Place, him and Harry and Dad and the rest of their extended family, and Dad is the one who breaks out the Firewhiskey.

Archie has too much. So does Harry, but Archie is still the one who gallantly offers to walk her up to her room, and it’s Archie who stumbles over the threshold and collapses into her bed.

“Just a few minutes,” he pants, a happy grin on his face even as he shuts his eyes. “Just until the room stops spinning.”

Harry laughs and tries to tumble over him, aiming for the other side of the bed. She misses, and Archie is warm, and soft, and oh so very familiar, and she relaxes. Archie’s arms go around her, gentle and supportive, and their first kiss tastes like transgression. But one kiss leads to two kisses, leads to three and more, and the next thing they know, they’re sharing a bed in a way they never have before.

“Well,” Archie says in the morning, clutching his head as Harry fumbles around her desk for a Hangover Cure. She knows she has one somewhere, if not several of them. Archie watches her as she shifts from her desk to her bag. “I guess there’s only one thing we have to decide. Was last night a horrific mistake that we bury forever, or not?”

Harry stops for a moment, her hands grasping a cold vial as she glances up at Archie: her best friend, her brother, maybe her everything. His steel-grey eyes, that she knows so well, reflect her own uncertainty. “Do you…” she pauses. “Do you want it to be a mistake?”

In matters of the heart, Archie is the brave one. He always has been. “I don’t want it to be a mistake,” he says firmly, rolling over to look at her.

She swallows. “Neither do I,” she murmurs, throwing him a Hangover Cure. “Neither do I.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to Anand for the beta-read!


End file.
